Was I Right To Walk Out Of The Job Interview?

Dear Liz,

I read your columns and they give me a lot of encouragement. I have noticed that when I don't feel good about a job opportunity, if I ignore my gut and take the job anyway it never works out. That's why I'm being much more sensitive now to the signals that I pick up on job interviews.

I went on a job interview last week with a local high tech company. They are not a startup.

They have about 500 employees. The company's reputation is that there are some smart people there and you can learn a lot, but also that they don't do a great job of valuing either their employees or people who apply to work there.

This was my first experience visiting the folks at "ABC Inc."

They told me my interview would start a 10 a.m. and end at 3 p.m. and they would provide lunch. The interviews started a half hour late, but I have seen that kind of thing before and it didn't faze me.

At noon I was in a conference room with three managers. We were having a great conversation about executive decision-making tools. That's what they were considering hiring me to create for them.

One of the interviewers asked the others, "Did anyone order lunch?" and no one knew. The main interviewer left the conference room and came back in three minutes later with a plate of old bagels left over from a morning meeting, with cream cheese smeared on the plate and wet napkins.

He put the plate of old bagels on the table and said, "I guess that's lunch!" One of the other fellows picked up a bagel and said, "They're stale, and there's no cream cheese or anything to put on them," and that was that.

There was no more mention of food. My stomach grumbled during the meeting and that went unremarked. I should have spoken up but socially I wasn't sure how to do it.

The disgusting bagel plate that should have been in the trash sat in front of us throughout the 90-minute meeting.

Then at 1:15 p.m., when we were wrapping up that meeting, the two other interviewers said to the main interviewer, "We're going out to lunch now. Do you want us to bring anything back?" Foolishly I thought they were taking me out to lunch.

The two interviewers left the conference room without asking me "Should we bring you something back?" and the primary interviewer got on his phone to check messages. We sat there like that for 15 minutes -- me sitting like a lump in my chair and him checking messages.

Then the main interviewer left and another woman came in and said "I will introduce you to your 1:30 p.m. interviewer now."

I said, "Gee, I've been here since 10:00 a.m. Is there a way for us to grab some lunch?" She looked at me like I was crazy.

"Your HR person's email told me to expect lunch, so I didn't have much breakfast and now I'm hungry," I said.

"Let me ask my manager," she said. She walked away and left me standing in the hallway.

After five minutes she came back and said, "I don't think I can place an order for delivery for just one lunch."

I thanked her for her time and I walked out of the building. I haven't heard a peep from "ABC Inc." since then.

I hope you will agree that I did the right thing in leaving.

I don't want to be a prima donna (male version) in my job search, but I can't imagine working around people who would behave so rudely.

What do you think?

Thanks,

Nevil

Dear Nevil,

A lot of people are not tuned in. They are not tracking with the activity around them. For your purposes it doesn't matter whether we call the interviewers' shocking behavior rudeness, cluelessness or a combination of the two.

You can't work with these people, and you did the right thing getting out of that recruiting pipeline!

The funny part is that work itself is a problem-solving activity. The idea is that we run into and surmount bigger and bigger problems at work all the time. Your interviewers ran into a tiny problem (someone forgot to order lunch) and they were incapable of solving it. Somebody could have told your 1:30 p.m. interviewer to do the interview over lunch.

Somebody could have called the deli at noon and ordered sandwiches. Somebody could have run down to the corner store and picked something up for you.

Whether it's bad manners or merely a severe case of disconnectedness from the real world, your interviewers behaved abysmally. You were mistreated that day and had no reason to keep standing in the hallway waiting for more abuse to be piled on top of you.

You deserve better. Thank God those people showed you how they operate before you took the job, rather than after you started!

Lots of companies are well-run and happy places, but lots of others are full of confused and misguided people who couldn't manage their way out of a paper bag.

The image of the leftover bagels with cream cheese smeared on the plate sitting in front of you during your 90-minute discussion is so horrific that I hardly know what to say.

By walking away from that undeserving crew, you have invited something much cooler and more interesting into your sphere. Write and tell us what it is when it shows up -- I predict it won't take long!

Best,

Liz